Biography
A recipient of many awards, Mark was the 2016 Laureate of the Ontario Arts Council’s Leslie Bell Prize, and received a 2016 National Choral Award from Choral Canada (Association of Canadian Choral Communities) for his research on Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Mark holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Toronto and Master of Music degree from Yale University’s School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. Recent concert highlights include performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Britten’s War Requiem, Arvo Pärt’s Passio and Credo, Canadian premieres of Jonathon Dove’s There was a Child, and Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ad Genua, Reena Esmail’s This Love Between Us and Barbara Croall’s Giishkaapkag (Where the Rock is Cut Through).
Mark’s research interests include the study of contemporary choral literature from the Baltic States, and in particular, the music of Arvo Pärt. Mark was an invited lecturer at the Arvo Pärt Project’s Sounding the Sacred conference in New York City in May 2017. He is published in Circuit Musiques Contemporaines, the Research Memorandum Series of Chorus America, and Principles of Music Composing of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.